COMMENTARY ON "CARE OF THE BEHAVIORAL HEALTH PATIENT IN THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT" COMMENTARY

In this issue of the Journal ofEmergency Nursing, there are 3 excellent articles that discuss various aspects of caring for patients with behavioral health-related presentations in the emergency setting.1-3 Although a very large number of diagnoses are subsumed under the broad heading "behav-ioral health," the specific illnesses and their manifestations are quite distinct. The aforementioned 3 articles demonstrate these distinctions well. Patients being treated after self-harm need to be assessed and treated quite differently from patients experiencing a panic attack, and both differ markedly from the assessment and management of the patient who is agitated and has the potential for violence. However, the essentials of care that patients with behavioral health-related presentations need and deserve from emergency caregivers are similar in many ways.